SINGAPORE - Joseph Schooling has continued to impress at the Fina World Championships when he smashed the national 100m butterfly record in Kazan, Russia.

The Singaporean topped his heat on Friday afternoon with a 51.65 sec effort, which eclipsed the 51.69 mark he set for his pet event when he won a silver at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games last year.

Schooling, who was fifth fastest overall, will compete in the semi-finals on Friday evening. Hungarian Lazlo Cseh (50.91) was the fastest qualifier, followed by American Tom Shields (51.09) and 16-year-old Chinese Li Zhuhao (51.54).

As a morale-booster, the 20-year-old pipped South Africa powerhouse Chad le Clos in the heats, as the Olympic champion finished second with a time of 51.83.

On Monday, Schooling finished seventh in the 50m fly on Monday to become the first local man to make the top eight of the biennial world championships since Ang Peng Siong's fourth-place 50m free finish at the 1986 Madrid edition.

A day later, he narrowly missed out on the final of the 200m fly with a time of 1min 56.11sec to finish 10th overall, 0.36sec behind the eighth-placed Shields (1:55.75).

The Straits Times

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